In the drilling of subsea wells, armored cable is used to provide electrical and hydraulic control lines from the floating structure, such as a drilling platform, to the blowout-preventer stack at the subsea wellhead. Considerable difficulties have been encountered because of the relative movement between the subsea wellhead and the floating structure which have damaged the cables. Such cables are very expensive so that damage to them is costly. The recovery of a damaged cable and resetting of a new cable are time consuming which further increases the cost of such cable damage. Also, it has been found that such armored cables have been damaged as a result of the shock of landing the lower end of the cable on the subsea wellhead apparatus.